Welcome to my blog. I home school Jenson and Wren, who are 6 and 4 years old respectively. We live in Cheltenham in England with my husband, Simon, and all manner of animals including chickens, rabbits, a dog and a handful of fish. This is an online diary. It's a place for me to keep a record of the highs and lows of our home ed experience.

As well as going on a leaf walk last week, we also went on a beak walk that was again organised by the RSPB. The children and I are old hats when it comes to scavenging for treasures washed up on the beach so this was right up our street. Fair to say it wasn't the only beach walk we did while at my Dad's. We were on the beach everyday mooching around but I've collected all of our outings in this one blog.

Jenson and Wren absolutely love the beach. Jenson in particular will spend hours collecting dead bits of crab and other animals.

He's a good spotter too and often spies the little brown egg sacks from a dog fish. Wren is also learning the art of it and found some super mermaid purses, otherwise known as skate egg sacks.

Jenson will turn over every ounce of beach...

...and knows a good place to look is on the strand line.

This is what Jenson's collection looked like after two days on the beach. His favourite finds are the large crab shells and claws, but he also found lots of whelk shells and cuttlefish. We also found an enourmous spider crab claw. He is excellent at identifying crab species, something I'm very proud of.

He had collected so many different parts of edible crab that he had enough to reconstruct its entire body. This activity is something he seems to love doing; he has previously reconstructed an entire fox skeleton.

Wren meanwhile loves her puzzles. Here she is engrossed in a fairly complicated one but cleverly used the sheet from the box to lay the puzzle pieces - almost like a painting by numbers.

One particular beach walk we did was on a lovely sunny evening. Jenson has such an affinity with the sea; he seems to get lost in the power and beuty of it.

The beach walk that was organised by the RSPB took place last Thursday. There was a nice little crowd of us as we all traipsed our way across the salt marshes and out onto the shingle beach beyond.

We found this little crab among the pebbles.

After 90 minutes of scavenging Jenson had amassed this collection.

Both Jenson and Wren enjoyed looking at their discoveries through magnifying glasses and used the identification charts for any species they were unsure of.